Losing it means…
I used to work in a convenience store, and every now and then a trucker would come in for coffee. He would always stay quite a while, and after getting to know him more and more, I started refering to him as my ’shrink’. He was one of those people who you could talk to about anything, who knew about everything, and who was able to come up with a solution for all life’s woes.
I told him a few times about my fear of losing it. Whatever it is, I’m scared of it going far away. I’m scared of going to that place where the crazy people go, lost deep inside themselves and unable to process anything else that is going on around them.
He was a very wise man, and he asked me one time, where I was scared of going. I told him that I didn’t know, that it was a place that doesn’t have a name or a location, but it is going crazy and it is a very, very scary place to go. Downright terrifying, even.
And he said, No. You’re not scared of going there. He said that I go there on purpose, I go to that place inside myself, away from everyone and everything on purpose. He said that people go there because they need to escape, and that if we didn’t like being there, we wouldn’t bother going.
I don’t even know that man’s name, and at the time I have to say that I thought there must be something about what he thought about going crazy. If you didn’t like going crazy, you just wouldn’t go there. How comforting is that?
But the thing is, sometimes I feel like there is really no other place to go. I have to wonder if, deep down, people really do have control over whether or not they get to be crazy. Like, imagine, after all these years feeling like I’ve been taken over by something beyond my control.
And then, poof. Its all my choice. I can choose to go crazy or I can choose to not go crazy, and it is all really up to me.
How wonderful is that? I have a choice! I can choose!
And then I wonder, can I really choose?
October 15th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Very interesting. Sometimes I like to think that things like my overeating are beyond my control, but I know that although the urge to might seem beyond my control, the actual action isn’t (is it?).
But when it comes to mental illness, I’m not sure the same argument holds. It’s giving me definite food for thought though…